People are laughing at TikTok videos of yoked men struggling to make it through Pilates Reformer classes. The low-impact, strength and flexibility workout dominated the men as they realized what many women have known all along—Pilates is hard.
The clips show men sweating, shaking, and close to tears as they perform moves with tiny little weights. The buff guys exert themselves under their own bodyweight and struggle to maintain coordination on the sliding platforms connected to weighted cables used for Pilates training.
Women commenting on the footage seized the opportunity to see the big strong men humbled.
“Never skipping videos of man doing pilates 😆😆😆.”
The pilates challenge no man was ready for
A TikTok video of men struggling in Jessica Casalegno’s pilates class has 13.8 million views and over 6,000 comments. She said, “If anyone tells you 'pilates is easy' its only because they haven’t found the right teacher yet (& clearly haven't done pilates with me yet 🤣😉).”
“If they made a tv show of men being humbled by Pilates I would watch all 10 seasons 👏🏼.”
“Trembling with ✨ cute pink weights✨ onhand 😭.”
Pilates turned these gym rats into wimps
Another video shared by Casalegno has 1.5 million views. She wrote, “Another day, another opportunity to humble men and introduce them to the amazing workout that is #pilates 😂🤍.”
“The level of emotive complaining is 10/10! Would you ever hear a room of women doing this?! Absolutely not 😅.”
“The one guy literally dripping with sweat and the guy that was just frowning looking really mad that he's in this position made me giggle 😂😂.”
Why pilates makes gym guys crumble
It’s not just men. Pilates is hard for women too, but strong men can struggle despite their fitness. According to Reddit users, men's workouts tend to focus on strength—not necessarily the mobility, endurance, or flexibility required to beast a Pilates session.
u/ckatoshfo posted on r/pilates, “Men seem to struggle much more with pilates than women - so exactly what is going on?”
u/ryanarvaos replied, “Men often focus on strength over mobility, especially if they are coming from a commercial gym background. Many gym routines lack training in different planes of motion and barely have any rotary or lateral core stability. Pilates also teaches spatial awareness and proprioception, something that you don't learn from the mirror muscles commercial gym routines.”
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